Home

Introduction

Hey there, and welcome to my blog. My name is Natasha and I'm a mom, a wife and a huge tech nerd, in that order. For some reason you have stumbled upon my personal blog, a staging area for my rants about being a mom, a wife and a tech nerd in this modern world of ours. With my kids I try to be a modern mom. What does that mean? For example, recently my husband and me purchased one of our sons an extremely kid friendly drone (he wanted a big one) and another an electric skateboard. These toys, if you could call them that, are very popular with the kids these days. Being a tech junkie myself, it wasn't a problem for me to buy a good quality RC drone with selfie function and help the kids use them. There are however parents out there who aren't as tech savvy, and that's the kind of folks I'm hoping to help out with this blog of mine.

Being a modern mom can be challenging. Kids these days are born with tech in their little finger. Things reach such extremes that more often than not, kids end up being miles ahead of the parents, and parents just stare at them blankly when their kids ask them for an electric skateboard, a new Geforce graphics card or a DAC. Admit it, you maybe heard of the electric skateboard, less so about the Geforce graphics card and you probably have no clue what a DAC is. That is what I am talking about. If you heard about all those, you know what they are, then congrats, good for you. Where things fall apart is when parent isn't sure if a certain tech gadget, especially an expensive one, is something that their kid really needs and will they use it properly and fully. That's where I'll be giving my input as a mommy with experience in all of these.

On occasion I might also veer into subjects like how to get kids interested in school work, how to spend more time together as a family, fun activities for everyone that aren't boring, dealing with issues that life throws at you, you know, lighter stuff like that. My boys are now 12 and 15, so you could say that I have some experience raising kids and taking care of family. Matt, my husband, is a huge help of course. DIY projects are another passion of mine. It all started when I needed to help out boys with their school projects. School fairs got me hooked on baking. My cookies are a treat, or at least that's what I've been told (not by my husband, I know he doesn't count). Expect a couple of DIY tutorials and some of my secret recipes posted as well.

Raising kids can sometimes be scary

Todays kids are very easily caught up in all kinds of nasty habits and just problematic behavior in general. Part of the reason for this lies in the fact that both mom and dad are forced to hold down a job in almost every family nowadays, to earn enough for a living. Such an arrangement leaves kids to their own devices most of the time. Kids are impressionable and will mimic what they see on TV, internet, in school, you name it. It's impossible to control this fully, but as a parent your goal should be to some extent shape the behavior of your kid. wouldn't you agree?

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother, you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

Jessica Lange

Parents that are busy and can't spend enough quality time with their kids run the risk of having issues later on. Kids could start having problems in school, keeping up with the class, they might end up with the wrong crowd, doing God knows what in the city. There are many unknown variables in this this whole situation of being a parent, which can be quite scary. Would be parents among you that are reading this might become discouraged now. Sorry about that. It's just how things are with kids. Children are a blessing overall, and whatever problems might occur, they are worth the risk.

Ups and downs of technology

Many kids these days are exposed to technology at a very early age. Things weren't like that when I was a child. My first experience with technology was a Nintendo, the original, I think. My own kids are the starting generation of what I call "modern kids". Amy, my sister, she had a daughter, my niece, back in 2011. She's 4 years old now, soon to be 5 and already she has to have her own tablet. Her parents work from home, so more often than not she stares in the tablet. My sister and her husband give it to her as a distraction, a cheap babysitter. I've talked about this with my sister already, and she agrees that it isn't healthy. We agreed that it's OK to do such a thing, as long as you make sure that the baby stares at the tablet in a productive way, instead of just playing any random game.

By letting kids only use tablet for playing games, they will pick up bad habits, like we already discussed. They'll prefer the thrill of games on their tablet instead of school work, home chores, playing together with the rest of the family, etc. Technology can be quite alienating that way, especially once that the kids get older and start using social networks. At the same time, it can also be helpful.

On the tablet example that I mentioned, instead of teaching kids to just play mind numbing games like Candy Crush, you could show them apps that teach them colors, letters, numbers, words, educational apps basically. That way the kids will get to have fun, and they learn in the process, you feed their inquisitiveness. Trick when doing that is to make sure that the app isn't too boring, because they won't use it. Only pick the ones with the best mix of education and fun. What that app is varies from kid to kid.

Buying proper gadgets for kids

One of the more common mistakes that parents do with their kids is they buy toys which are too much for the kids to handle. A great example of that is my sister giving my barely 5 year old niece a tablet. Sure, tablets are inexpensive, or at least there are inexpensive tablets, so it isn't such a problem for my sister, but when more expensive gadgets get involved parents reach the point of diminishing returns, so to speak.

Every parent out there wants to buy their kids the best possible toys, gadgets, bicycles, etc. However buying an expensive gadget that a kid between ages 5-10 doesn't know how to use or appreciate is a waste of money, pure and simple. Let's go back to another example. What I talked about previously, Geforce graphics cards. Your 10 year old might come up to you and ask you to buy a Geforce GTX 1080 so that he can play Minecraft. He heard it on YouTube, or whatever, that GTX 1080 is the best and he wants one. Being the good parent that you are, you go out and buy a PC with a GTX 1080, despite the hefty price tag of $2000+.

Now your kid is happy, but what you don't know is that odds are good you could have bought a computer for let's say $700 and it would have performed just as good for the kind of games that most kids are interested in. Minecraft is a game that without mods is no where near as demanding graphically to warrant the use of an expensive graphics card like the GTX 1080. In other words, younger kids, for the most part, wouldn't know how to appreciate it and you'd just be wasting your money. They could play their game just as well on Radeon RX 570 or GTX 1060, for just the third of the GTX 1080 cost.

Final words

On that note, let me finish my rant here. I've already went on for much longer than I probably should have. At the very least you've got a taste of what I'll be talking about here at my blog. For the time being it'll be empty, until I find the time to put out more content, more articles. For the time being they are just ideas in my head, and there are many of them, let me tell you. To find out more about me and my family, checkout the About page, to send me a message, checkout the Get in touch page. All that's left now is to write, write, write, let's get started.